


Burden of Guilt

by anachronism



Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Dark, Gen, Hollow!Ichigo - Freeform, Orihime-centric, but not quite in the way you're thinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-27
Updated: 2015-05-27
Packaged: 2018-04-01 11:51:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4018696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anachronism/pseuds/anachronism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything’s a mess. Ishida’s been stabbed. Kurosaki’s transformed into a monster. Ulquiorra’s dissolving into dust.</p><p>This is all her fault.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burden of Guilt

“I will… protect… I will… protect… you.” Ichigo’s voice is stilted, but the creature using his voice isn’t Ichigo. The monster behind the mask is all flowing hair, smooth, pale skin that looks like it could double as armor, and an absolutely terrifying amount of power that was born of a single-minded determination.

To protect her.

Kami, this is all her fault.

Uryuu’s been stabbed by the same sword he had once followed into battle. Now, he’s quietly bleeding out against the ruined ceiling of Las Noches, trying to be as still and nonthreatening as possible, waiting for this scenario to play out.

Not-Ichigo is busy charging another cero. She doesn’t mean to belittle her friends, but if Ulquiorra couldn’t survive it there’s no way Uryuu will be able to. And he knows it. She can see it in his face. The worst part, she thinks, is the tired resignation she finds there. The way he doesn’t so much as glance at her, whether because he wishes to meet death head on or doesn’t want to burden her by asking her to save him, she doesn’t know.

She considers her shield briefly before dismissing it from her thoughts. She’s not even as strong as Uryuu. Perhaps if she was they wouldn’t be in this mess. She wouldn’t be forever asking Ichigo to protect her…

By kami if he didn’t deliver.

She can’t just let Uryuu pay for her selfishness. She picks herself up off the ground, shouting to be heard over the rush of reiatsu. “Wait Kurosaki-kun! Wait!”

It’s no good. He either can’t or won’t acknowledge her voice. So she take the only option left to her and runs headfirst into the space between her two friends.

“Inoue-san, no!” Uryuu reaches out and tries to pull her out of the way. But she stands firm, arms stretched out to her sides in the universal sign for ‘do not pass’.

To her great relief, not-Ichigo stops gathering reiatsu. The cero doesn’t fade but they’re no longer swimming in killing-intent.

“You… protect… him?”

Tears are running down her face. She can’t tell if she never stopped crying or if she started anew. “Yes. Yes! And so do you. You remember Ishida-kun, don’t you?”

Behind her, Uryuu’s breath hitches. She’ll heal him in a minute. Right now she’s searching reiatsu-lit eyes for any sign of the man who is her friend.

“Protect,” not-Ichigo growls. He spins around and releases his cero so quickly that Orihime doesn’t realize what happened until she registers Ulquiorra’s reformed body, minus a head, backlit by a wash of red energy.

The remainder of the body quickly breaks down in the wind.

Just like that, Ulquiorra is dead.

The silence that follows is deafening.

She takes one step forward, then another.

“Don’t -” Uryuu cuts himself off when not-Ichigo’s attention returns to them. Instead his eyes bore into her back, willing her not to go.

This is something she must do. Her certainty steadies her stride. Not-Ichigo remains perfectly still, even as she stands directly before him. He won’t harm her, she knows, so she reaches for his mask.

A bit of careful tugging reveals that it cannot be removed. She thinks of Nel and gently pushes at the chin. To her relief, it slides easily to the top of his head. Beneath is the same porcelain white skin that encompasses the rest of his body and dull brown eyes that are an exact match to the ones she knows so well.

“Thank goodness,” she sighs, because it’s somehow a relief to know that Ichigo’s hollow isn’t in direct control, even though it’s obvious that not much of Ichigo’s conscience is present either. Because of this she feels brave enough to let her hand drop to his cheek in order to cup it lightly.

Slowly, with hands that are really more like claws, he copies her gestures. Her hair slides through his fingers and she smiles at him, takes his hand with hers and turns back to Uryuu, hoping he’ll follow.

He does.

He seems content to be led by her hand, stopping only when she lets go because someone has to pull Zangetsu out of Uryuu if she’s going to heal him.

“Kurosaki?” Uryuu blinks up at the strange figure before him. (She suspects his vision is becoming blurry.) “Inoue-san?”

“I don’t know.” She stares at the golden dome of light surrounding Uryuu so she doesn’t have to look him in the eye. “I don’t know,” she repeats because she feels like she should say something, have some sort of answer.

Ever since she discovered her Shun Shun Rikka there hasn’t been anything she couldn’t fix or heal given enough time and effort. She wonders if this will be the one thing she won’t be able to do anything about.

They’re all alive. She tells herself they have all the time in the world to find a solution for this.

She concentrates on Uryuu’s wound.

Tensa Zangetsu lies at his side, glinting dangerously under the light of the crescent moon. When Uryuu is healed he picks the sword up and offers it, hilt-first and unflinching, to the familiar stranger before him.

Orihime holds her breath.

She doesn’t think she’s imagining there’s something of Ichigo in those eyes when the hollow he is now accepts the blade, (and peace offering, for what it’s worth) places it in his sash and caresses the hilt lightly.

She directs her fairies to him next. While he may be uninjured, somewhere deep inside he’s still the Ichigo she knows (she has to believe he is) and a little material modesty went a long way to making him comfortable in any situation.

Not-Ichigo watches with interest as his clothes rematerialize bit by bit.

(She forgoes the sandals and socks - he doesn’t seem need them, and she doubts they’ll fit anyway.)

The shihakusho conceals the hole in his chest, but he’s too different for it to matter. The mask on his head is more or less a dead giveaway, and there’s something regal about the red fur that adorns his neck, writs and ankles. He holds himself with a grace that Ichigo normally doesn’t bother with. She’s pretty sure his hair is longer than hers.

His most foreign aspect, the one that makes it difficult for her to think of him as Ichigo, is the all-encompassing white. Still, she holds her right hand out in invitation and her obliges her by taking it. She doesn’t feel weird treating him so intimately. And the warmth of his body, which she realizes is directly beside her, doesn’t make butterflies flare up in her stomach or her cheeks darken with a blush.

“What now?”

Uryuu is watching not-Ichigo speculatively. He glances at the newest hole in the ceiling of Las Noches. Below them, their friends’ reiatsu clash in battle. “We can’t stay up here.” He sends a side-long look at not-Ichigo again.

He receives an uninterested stare in return.

He adjusts his glasses and mutters, “How to explain this?” in a way that makes her feel incredibly guilty.

She clutches not-Ichigo’s hand tightly. “It’s my fault. I knew how badly-injured he was and I was still more afraid for myself. So - so I asked him to save me,” she hiccups, trembling where she stands. “And he couldn’t, not how he was. So he transformed into this -” her throat closes up and she can’t say anything else. She tells herself not to cry again, but she can’t seem to stop the flood of emotion that sends her tears running.

Something soft brushes her cheek and she opens her eyes to see not-Ichigo examining her tears on the back of his hand, like they might be proof she’s injured somehow. And he’s not wrong, just not in the way he’s looking for. He can’t protect her from her own foolishness.

The spark of concern in his eyes makes her cry harder.

Uryuu’s hand squeezes her shoulder. “It’ll be alright Inoue-san. We’ll get him back.”

She lets herself believe him.

“Come on,” he creates a circular platform of glowing reishi. “Everyone’s waiting for us.”

**Author's Note:**

> So I was rewatching the anime and in Ichigo's last fight vs. Ulquiorra I turned my attention to a character I normally dismiss - Orihime - and I thought to myself, wow, she must feel really bad about all this. And then I thought, _what if?_
> 
> And this was born.


End file.
